Advice From A Kick-Ass Dad: How To Scare the Shit Out of Your Kids Before Someone Else Does

Lauren and I have this friend. To protect her identity, let's call her Melissa X. No...wait...that might give it away. Let's go with Mrs. Maguire. Yeah, that's better.

Mrs. Maguire has a three-year old son. On Friday, she woke up, got her little boy all dressed up as a tiger or elephant or mutant ninja turtle or whatever it is three year old boys dress up as for Halloween, and headed off to his first preschool costume party. Her son was, predictably, rather excited for the day. This was going to be his first real Halloween, and it was going to kick ass. (My words, not his.)

When they arrived at school, they were greeted by a room full of similarly dressed, similarly enthused toddlers. There were princesses and pandas, Doras and Diegos, butterflies and Batmans...you get the idea. Everyone was having a great time.

Until that one kid showed up. You know, the one dressed as an extra from 28 Days Later, all blood and gore and festering wounds. Once he crashed the party, all the excitement of dress-up and Jack-O-Lanterns and Trick-or-Treat promptly disappeared, as 19 preschoolers peed themselves in unison upon the realization that Halloween isn't all puppy dogs and ice cream. It's meant to be scary, dammit.

As you can imagine, Mrs. Maguire was none to pleased about this. Nor were the rest of the parents. They were the ones left holding the bag, desperately attempting to salvage Halloween for 19 traumatized, pee-stained kids.

And I've gotta' say, I couldn't agree with Mrs. Maguire more. As a new dad, the potential for this kind of situation in my near future infuriates me. If anyone is going to emotionally scar my son by exposing him to stuff he shouldn't be exposed to, it's going to be me, godamn it, not some other unfit parent.

That's why I plan to indulge Ryan's every desire to watch any scary movie that intrigues him, regardless of his age or its level of appropriateness. It's much better to have him ease into a lifetime of debilitating phobias while in the comfort of his own home rather then have them thrust upon him while he's bobbing for apples at his preschool Halloween party.

Phobias like these:

The Clown From Poltergeist

There are a lot of scary movies out there, with many a disturbing scene, but for my money there is no more crippling fear a kid can develop then the realization that when you least expect it, something as seemingly innocuous as a stuffed clown can flat out wreck your shit while you sleep.

In case you've forgotten the movie, here's the clown in it's not-yet-possessed-yet-still-exceedingly-creepy state.

I was seven when Poltergeist came out. I had a stuffed clown hanging from a shelf in my bedroom. You can see where this is going.

Each night before bed, I would turn that clown around so it faced away from me, and every time I opened my eyes, I fully expected it to have gone missing. Every shuffle, squeak or creaky floorboard I heard throughout the night could only be that murderous clown, slowly making its way from the shelf to my bed and preparing to unleash hell. And if I dared to look...well, we all know how that ended for the kid in Poltergeist.

Eventually, I toughened up, waited until the light of day, and hid the clown in my sister's room. Let her deal with it.

The worst part of being subjected to Poltergeist at such a young age wasn't so much the sudden fear of clowns as it was the newfound distrust I quickly developed towards all of the inanimate objects I harbored in my bedroom closet. If a freaking clown could be the end of me, what about those toys better equipped to do some serious damage? Curious George, is that you? GI Joe? Hungry Hungry Hippos????

The Twins from The Shining

You know, for the first hour or so, The Shining really isn't all that frightening. Then Danny Torrance decides to go for a little cruise on his Big Wheel, and stumbles upon these two.

Meet the Grady twins; loving daughters/brutal axe-murder victims of Charles Grady, the former caretaker of the Overlook. They want Danny to come play with them forever...and ever...and ever.

If you saw The Shining before the age of 17 and claim that this scene didn't 1) leave you terrified of identically-dressed twins, and 2) forever change your expectations when you turned the corner of a hotel hallway, then I'm calling bullshit.

The truly debilitating aspect of this Shining-induced phobia is that it doesn't fade with time. Any reasonable adult will eventually come to realize that they probably won't suffer death-by-stuffed clown, but you can never be absolutely certain what previously went down at that Motel 6 you just checked into.

Sweet dreams.

The Shower Scene in Psycho

There's an episode of The Simpsons where Homer, in an attempt to cheer up a despondent Mel Gibson, tells him, ''Before Lethal Weapon 2, I never thought there could be a bomb in my toilet, but now I check every time."

If you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's original Psycho, as I did as an impressionable 13-year old, you know where Homer's coming from. I haven't showered while home alone since 1988 out of fear of being viciously stabbed by a cross-dressing lunatic. Adherence to this policy has kept me safe from harm, though it has made for some awkward elevator rides.

The real power of this legendary scene is that it forces you to accept that you aren't safe anywhere.  There you are, enjoying a hot shower, scrubbing your back, belting out your finest falsetto to that Aaron Neville-Linda Ronstadt duet you dig so much, when BAM...butcher knife through the shower curtain.

Now, by today's standards, these three movies are relatively tame. And that's what pisses me off about Mrs. Maguire's experience on Friday. Thanks to today's cinematic efforts, by the time he's seven, Ryan will very likely be terrified of a whole bunch of shit that I haven't even considered. God knows, if he stumbles upon Paranormal Activity on Starz one night he'll be sleeping in our bed until his late teens. He certainly doesn't need the rest of his classmates' help in introducing him to the concept of fear.

The lesson here is simple, yet so many parents seem to struggle with its implementation. If you want to be irresponsible and screw up your kid, by all means have at it, but kindly make sure you're screwing up only your kid. Don't go screwing up my kid. I can do an excellent job of that on my own, thank you very much.